A Better Leadership for These Times

Introducing The Blue Leader

The Blue Leader is Better for these Times of Uncertainty and Permanent Turbulent Change

Blue leaders are everywhere. You just need to know what to look for to identify them. Blue leadership is the emergent leadership that is better aligned and aptly conducive to this era of uncertainty and permanent turbulent change.

The character of Blue Leadership emerges from the mountain of literature on leadership, strategy, human capital management, social responsibility and business excellence. Sightings of Blue Leaders have been regularly made in the news, in numerous consulting assignments, in clients and people met during networking meetings resulting from knowing the evidence indicative of Blue Leadership.

The Blue Leader is at least 90 years in the making. The literature and research on leadership has spawn thousands of books and articles, with many prescribing models explaining inadequate and uninspired leadership, yet offering alternative deficient models for leadership effectiveness.

There are many different definitions and perspectives of leadership. Leadership has been described variously by the essential characteristics or traits of leaders, by the processes of leadership behavior, by their task vs relationship focus, by the outcomes or impact of their task achievements, and by their adaptive responses to changing contextual variables. And then some.

Leadership models are often constructed by pointing to exceptionally talented and knowledgeable leaders who build lasting organisations and highly profitable businesses. Sadly, attempts to emulate such exemplary leaders have all failed, without exceptions, to yield comparable outcomes for the imitators of such leaders. Why?

The truth is that a leader does not actually have any special power over others in his sphere of influence. Power is an illusion. A leader’s ability to persuade and command the desired actions by his followers comes from his deep conviction of the goals and mission direction of his vision. The leader develops the necessary commitment for a consensus of willingness and risk acceptance to act. Most leadership skills are in fact learnt. The abilities in the leadership capacity to perform leadership tasks can be found in nearly everyone to a matter of degree. The key lies in a holistic understanding of leadership.

The “Blue” in Blue Leadership is associated with commitment, loyalty, trustworthiness and dependability. It is gender neutral, is accepted as a neutral colour for diversity and exists as a permanent colour for everyone irrespective of location eg. the perennial “Blue” sky. The “Blue” quality also has a calming and tranquil effect for cool-headedness in the midst of permanent turbulence and change. It personifies the intuitive and innovative Blue Leadership spirit that welcomes and embraces the impending unknown yet known events from the blue horizons ahead.

Unlike normal leaders who are reactionary in their response to issues and often based their decision-making on gut-feelings, legacy experience and imitating others, the Blue Leader lives and acts in accordance with a conscious philosophy or personal ideology dominated by four passions, namely strategy, service, people and performance.

A passion is a preferential attitude of determination, and may be regarded as an intense, almost obsessive, belief in something, a purpose or cause, which produces a great deal of satisfaction and self-actualising sense of fulfilment in their accomplishments. The active essence of leadership is found in the mind. For the Blue Leader, this is located in his 4 passions.

The 4 passions are characterized by some or most of the values and orientations commonly associated respectively with each passion, as in the following:

Blue Leaders’ passions focus their orientations towards the desired impactful outcomes obtained in goal attainment. The 4 passions are integrated by unique personal values, and transcribed into the appropriate behaviors and translated into natural instinctive self-directed social action. Blue Leadership actions are therefore purposeful, driven by the conscious values of his passionate orientations towards his goals.

The variable combinations of his passions in decision-making provide the “sense” for his decisions and executive actions. The Blue Leader is a continuous experiential learner. The Blue Leader constantly reflects on his worldly experience to construct and re-construct new social realities that maintain alignment with his consummate passions.

For the Blue Leader, what is most important about any event or phenomenon is not what has happened, but what it means.

The Blue Leader derives meaning by using his passions and their orientations to provide a consistent sense-making worldview to empower conscious reality-learning through “knowing what I think when I see what I say”.

The mind of the Blue Leader produces a single-minded discipline akin to that commonly found in professional sportsmen and warriors. Like them, the Blue Leader navigates his life dedicated to his characteristic “Way” or “The Dao”. The Blue Way (or Dao) provides a sense of order and direction which informs the application of disciplined actions in a playbook of 9 action pathways. A unique Blue Strategy also empowers the Blue Leader to create exceptional marketplace victory without engaging in often bloody competitive actions. The goal of Blue Strategy is to become “Different from The Rest” instead of “Better Than The Best”.

The Blue Leadership difference in organisations today determines their success and survival, or failure and oblivion.

LOOK AROUND YOU.

Have you encountered any Blue Leaders?

The Blue Leader can be spotted by the following behaviors:

· He/she constantly demonstrates all 4 passions in his decisions and actions.

· He/she is conscious of the ideology and personal values driving his passions.

· He/she is a continuous learner and encourages his people to be one.

· He/she is dedicated to decisions and actions across all 9 pathways.

· He/she promotes and executes the Blue Strategy to be “Different from the Rest”.

· He/she develops everyone to become a Blue Leader.

Future Articles shall elaborate further on the emergent Blue Leadership for these times of uncertainty and permanent turbulent change. Follow me.